Dreams As An Escape

Frieda sums up the purpose of Kitty’s recent dreams when she tells her they are “just an escape” (252). While Kitty is using the dreams as an escape, Frieda is wrong about what Kitty is trying to escape from. The novel illustrates not only how Katharyn’s brain uses dreams to help ease her back into her own reality but how Katharyn goes about realizing that her life as Kitty is not her real life.

Even though Katharyn’s parents die in a plane crash in the fall, Katharyn does not begin dreaming she is Kitty until after the beginning of the year. It is suggested before that time she was so busy with the holidays that she did not have to focus on her loss. When she does start the dreams, she imagines that she is a single woman, she and Lars...